Jamaican American senator announces 2020 US Presidential bid

WASHINGTON, CMC – US Senator Kamala Harris, 54, first-term Jamaican American Democratic Senator from California has announced her candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential Elections.

Senator Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, made the announcement on television on Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

Love for country

“I love my country, and this is a moment in time that I feel a sense of responsibility to fight for the best of who we are,” said Harris, who was elected to the US Senate in 2016.

In announcing her presidential bid, Harris’ campaign said it was aimed at underscoring “a reminder of the aspirational fight for progress that marked Harris’ upbringing and that guides her today.”

Harris has modelled her campaign logo on graphics used by the late Caribbean American Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for US president.

Chisholm, who was born in Brooklyn, was the daughter of Barbadian and Guyanese immigrants

Harris said her parents were very cognizant of the civil rights struggles in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

“That’s the language that I grew up hearing, and it was about a belief that we are a country that was founded on noble ideals. And we are the best of who we are when we fight to achieve those ideals.”

Jamaican father, Indian mother

Harris – whose Jamaican-born father, Donald Harris, is a university professor, and Indian-born mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is a physician –previously served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017, and as District Attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010.

The junior senator is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C. and University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

In the 1990s, she worked in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the City Attorney of San Francisco’s office. In 2004, she was elected District Attorney of San Francisco.

On November 8, 2016, Harris defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to succeed outgoing Senator Barbara Boxer, becoming California’s third female US Senator and the first of either Indian or Jamaican descent.

Harris supports Medicare for all, legalization of recreational marijuana, sanctuary cities, passing a DREAM Act for immigrant children, and lowering taxes for the working- and middle-class while raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy.